Ted had bought for him a little, wiry bay cayuse, and both he and Stella
had taught him to ride, and Dick could now throw a rope with reasonable
accuracy and speed.
Ted had given him a small revolver, and they had had great fun learning
to shoot at a target, which was usually a bleached skull of a cow that
had died long since on the prairie, and its bones picked clean by the
coyotes.
Dick's revolver was only of thirty-two caliber, as befitted his
strength, but the youngster had a good eye and the steady nerves of
youth, and he soon got so that he could hit the skull with reasonable
accuracy.
"Putting the shot through the eye" was one of the jokes of these
shooting tournaments, in which Stella, and sometimes Bud, joined.
One day when they were shooting at a skull target, Bud missed--probably
intentionally, for Bud was a crack shot.
Dick jumped up and down in glee, for he had just knocked a chip of bone
from the skull himself.
"Bud missed! Bud missed!" he shouted, in glee. "Bud, you're an old
tenderfoot.
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